Production and Delivery Dates

This is the time of year when customers seek to get new furniture in their home by the Holidays.

If you need something by Thanksgiving, you will have to buy it off the floor.

For Christmas, and you want to order, you are probably too late though there is a slim chance you can still get it if you order in the next three or four days.

Remember too that the entire furniture industry closes down for vacation between Christmas and New Years, so if its not shipped out by December 20th, its probably not going to ship until early to mid-January.

For companies like Sun Delivery they would need to have possession of the goods by Nov 1 for Thanksgiving delivery, and Dec 1 for Christmas Delivery.

Can you educate me on why it takes a furniture delivery company three weeks to deliver a piece? I understand that Amazon type delivery speed is never going to happen with fine furniture, but three weeks seems like a long time. I order something LTL freight maybe once per year and a week or less is the norm.

This is a great question and will require a lengthy answer to respond properly.

Any kind of transportation is renting space for a period of time over distance. In order to be profitable you need a structure that allows you to maximize your space usage over distance and time traveled. In other words, the truck has to be full into a given area. The first 90% of the truck capacity pays the expenses, the last 10% is the profit for the owner. Like a cruise ship or even an airline , if they roll out 75% full, or even 85% full, they are losing money on the trip. That max capacity is what keeps them in business. So the art of trucking is to achieve that goal, and it's much easier with volume. It's also easier to achieve if you have partners or can run a full truck to a distribution center, then parcel out in smaller trucks with smaller loads (Which is your LTL network). Common Carriers succeed because they are huge, have lots of terminals to break down into smaller loads, partner handoffs, and they accept every kind of freight.

The home furniture delivery doesn't have that efficiency, not when you have the entire country to cover. With the exception of a very few companies, they have no distribution hubs, don't carry any product except furniture (which does not travel well in Common Carriers due to the forklifts that industry uses) and they have many miles to run with few stops. So its critical that they have full trucks to capacity on their runs into a region. This is also why most refuse to go into the Dakotas, Northern Michigan. Northern Maine, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Too many miles and not enough stops, while that diesel burns out at 10 mpg and two men on the payroll in the cab.

What they have to do is accumulate furniture until they can justify a run into a region. They have to be full. The smaller the company, the longer time it takes to get enough to go into that area. This is why you hear the upset customer say "I've been waiting 6 weeks for my order to arrive! I will never use them again!" Smaller companies know this and have to charge less to try to get business. The problem with charging less is you hire lower quality people to make the deliveries and your running stock is ancient and subject to breakdowns. This is why I don't use "The cheapest guy", because I know through experience what headaches are coming. Two guys who look like they got out a bar fight the night before and haven't showered in a week show up and your furniture is wet because they have holes in the roof of the truck and the box leaks. Sure, that cheap price looked really good at time of order, but you get what you pay for. And just try to get them to fix it under their dime. HA!

So I recommend Sun Delivery Service. They cost more, but they run newer trucks have three distribution centers, their personnel are better, they run to all 50 states and will only allow a load to sit for so long before they roll the truck, regardless if they are full. They also take care of damages. Are they perfect? No, they are not. They do have some damages - but they are better than anyone else in the market. It's a low margin business, and not many people want to get into it.

Three weeks is good. It's never really going to get much quicker than that from the best of the white glove services, they just don't have the logistical network to make it happen quicker. East coast population centers get it the quickest, and as you fan out into the Plains states the density of orders declines and times lengthen.

Interesting. I guess you just have to real patient for good furniture between long production times and long delivery times.

Fastest shipping is if you have access to a commercial loading dock where a specialized furniture carrier can roll in Monday through Friday and drop off. These are big 18-wheelers running 53' trailers, so they have to have access. A lot of my customers will contract with their local moving and storage companies to receive delivery. Quicker and about half the price of white glove inside delivery. Once it hits the loading dock, you can then either self-haul or see what that moving company would charge you to bring it the last mile to your home.